RBL 01/2020 Mahri Leonard-Fleckman

The House of David: Between Political Formation and Literary Revision

Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016. Pp. xvii + 334. Hardcover. $79.00. ISBN 9781506410180.

Klaus-Peter Adam Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

The beginnings of Judah and the historical role of the Davidic dynasty present themselves as contested topics at the intersection between epigraphic, biblical, and archaeological evidence. With the exception of the Tel Dan stela, the Davidic dynasty’s distinctive absence from tenth-century epigraphic records puts the burden for the historicity of the Davidic dynasty mostly on the biblical record. For the historian and the biblical scholar, the synthesis of facts about the Davidic dynasty beyond its attestation in the assumingly old sources of the book of Kings is a notoriously testing exercise. The scholar faces a complex archaeological evidence as well as discourses about the redaction history in Samuel and Kings. The terrain has dramatically changed since in much of European scholarship over the last two decades the trust in the large pre-Deuteronomistic sources of the Succession Narrative and the History of David’s Rise have gradually given way to more nuanced pictures of redactional reworking in the material in 1 Sam 16–2 Sam 5 and 2 Sam 15–1 Kgs 2, respectively. Can a detailed look at the biblical record, namely, at the idiomatic “house of David,” save the Davidic history from its evaporation into the realm of a mythic past that minimalist historians have long declared?

The book under review focuses on the term “house of David.” Synthesizing results from the use of analogous terms in ancient Near Eastern epigraphy and in biblical historiography and archaeology, it points to an understanding of the “house of David” and “Judah” as two

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

separate entities. Comparing what is assumed to be the earliest material of 2 Samuel with the “house of X” and “mār X” terminology in Neo-Assyrian and in north Syrian contexts (chs. 1–2) leads the author to conclude that the biblical sources suggest a rule of the house of David over Israel prior to the dynasty’s rule over Judah. The earliest records of the Davidic dynasty do not refer to Judah as a political entity. They instead associate the house of David with Israel. Furthermore, some of the material that pertains to Israel builds the backbone of the layers that are relevant for the oldest historiography in 2 Samuel, reaching back before the eighth century BCE. It is exactly this material that recent continental scholarship ascribes to Judean post-720 BCE historiography. The study offers a thought-provoking example for the synthesis of sophisticated source-critical methodology and textual analysis for a reconstruction of the contours of a tenth/ninth- century history of the Davidic dynasty. This review first summarizes selected hallmarks before concluding remarks.

The study sets out to challenge the predominant view on David as primarily a dynasty of Judah. First, it draws attention to the remarkably few references to Judah’s political agency in the oldest records, given the use of the term in the Saul-David tradition predominantly as a geographical name or as a reference to the population (2). Second, Judah’s appearance as a polity is limited to two sections that source-critical scholarship currently identifies as relating to late eighth-century historiography: (1) 2 Sam 2:4a, the anointing of David as king over Judah in Hebron; (2) Judah’s dominance over Israel at the beginning of the Sheba revolt 19:9bβ–15, 16b–18a; 19:41–20:5. These passages identify Judah as an acting polity specifically related to David (2).

The core argument of the primary association of the house of David with its rule over Israel is based on an analysis of 2 Sam 2–5. It suggests that the absence of Judah as a polity in the record after Ishbaal’s death (2 Sam 4 until 2 Sam 5:5; 6:2; 11:11; 12:8) and before becoming a key player in the above-mentioned passages in the Absalom revolt (2 Sam 19) suggests a close link between the house of David as a ruling elite primarily over Israel that was only secondarily related to Judah. The fact that Judah is mentioned ten times in 2 Sam 2–5 (2 Sam 1:18 in 19–27; 2 Sam 2:4a, 7, 10, 11; analogous to 2 Sam 5:4–5; 2 Sam 3:8 MT gloss; and 3:10) with a lacuna after Ishbaal’s death conveys, the study suggests, the understanding that the Israelite kingship was transferred from the house of Saul to the house of David independently from Davidic rulership over Judah.

In its core chapters 4–6, the study further substantiates how the scattered references to Judah together with the highly fragmented nature of references of the narrative to this polity exclude the primacy of this material. One core argument is the lack of a coherent plotline of the Judah references (4–5). For instance, 2 Sam 2 is largely dominated by David’s struggle to win over Israel, while Judah remains in the background. The author

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

explains the rare use of Judah’s activity in 2 Samuel through the prevalence of the “house of David” terminology in 2 Sam 3:1; 15:16a. The study suggests that these passages focus on David’s rule over Israel alone rather than on Judah (6). Leonard-Fleckman proposes that this evidence renders the addition of the Israel material post-720 BCE unlikely; almost the entire David material would thus have been “invented” at and after this point in time (6). Rather, the study assumes a blurry and shifting geographical division between the tenth/ninth-century BCE Israel and Judah as the backdrop for the oldest tradition that envisions Israel as “a body politic operating in the central highlands and utilizing the Transjordan and the far south as temporary, liminal bases of power” (6). To buttress this, Leonard-Fleckman points to historical geography. Remarkably, early sources about Israel lack references to far northern territories. With the exception of 2 Sam 20, this material refers to a small-scale Israel prior to the ninth-century extension, a “little Israel” in the terminology of Lauren Monroe and David Fleming. Moreover, the narrative conceives of Israel as a mobile body politic “rather than a division of groups or tribes” (7). As a consequence, the alleged geographical realities of a pre-Omride period Israel are such that the “house of David” terminology may predate the eighth-century Judah tradition and that the Israel tradition has primacy over the Judah tradition; the latter serves in a Judean reading to reorient the story toward Judah (8).

The analysis of the core tradition from 2 Sam 2–5 (ch. 4), 15–19 (ch. 5), and 1 Kgs 12 (ch. 6) supports these assumptions with further source-critical details. Leonard-Fleckman suggests that 1–2 Samuel may contain material from the tenth-century BCE, following the tradition of an interpretation of the Succession Narrative based on Rost yet nuancing this with more recent scholarship. While the study assumes pre-Deuteronomistic sources in both 2 Sam 2–5 and 15–19, it dates it neither in the seventh century or later (Römer), nor as pre-Deuteronomistic David tradition from around 720 BCE (R. G. Kratz, A. A. Fischer; 25–26). Discussing mostly these latter approaches, Leonard-Fleckman differs from their results mainly in dating some of the older biblical sources before 720 BCE to a collective memory of a “small” pre-Omride Israel. She assumes the creation of a story of David as king of Israel prior to the fall of the Northern Kingdom, based on allegedly eighth-century biblical sources that use the term “Israel” to refer to both kingdoms (H. G. M. Williamson, D. Fleming) such as Isa 8:14, dated pre-720 BCE, pointing to “the two houses of Israel” (32).

The study presents a picture that, prior to the fall of Israel in 720, Judah envisioned a story of David’s and of Judah’s origin that would reflect its own historical genesis as it saw itself as “grown out of a larger configuration, a political body defined as Israel” (33). This process did not stop after the Assyrian defeat but continued and ultimately was integrated into the confluence of traditions available to the Deuteronomistic historiographer(s) (33). Methodologically, the study isolates primary fragments of the narrative material

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

(“building blocks”) from their redactional reworking in an editing phase (110). In tension with the strand of current scholarship represented by Kratz, Fischer, and J. Wright, Leonard-Fleckman demonstrates that these independent sources convey historical assumptions that theoretically predate 720. Parts of the composition around David as king of Israel suggest his connection to Hebron and Mahanaim and that those references, written from a Judahite perspective conceive of Judah as part of Israel (31).

Chapters 4–6 scrutinize the actual perceptions about Israel and Judah and the rule of the house of David prior to the late eighth century. Chapter 4 (109–45) adduces evidence for the antiquity of three independent building blocks of Absalom’s rebellion (2 Sam 15:1– 16a), the forest of Ephraim episode (2 Sam 18:1–19:9ba), and Sheba’s rebellion (2 Sam 20:14–22). The core theme of the building blocks appears as a typical internal revolt of a particular dynastic line that was posing a threat emerging from within the circles around the dynasty itself. The study interprets the location of the Sheba revolt in a far northern town beyond the reach of David as potentially mirroring this narrative writer’s concern to maintain the impression of the Davidic authority over all “the tribes of Israel” (20:14). The “house of David” idiom is not used after 2 Sam 3:1, 6, as it were. Leonard-Fleckman finds a house-internal uprising to be a pattern absent in the history of Israel and Judah and, consequently, takes this to be a historically reliable incident. Further, she assumes that David’s flight from Jerusalem in 2 Sam 15:16a including his clan and supporters was indicative of the mobility of his house. The absence of the terminology “house of David” until 1 Kgs 12:16, 19–20 and its reappearance in this passage mirrors the same historical concept of the mobility of the Davidic house ruling over a polity (131–32).

Leonard-Fleckman suggests that David’s Mahanaim journey crystallized around building blocks consisting of an exodus from Jerusalem with the corresponding farewell and return scenes in the revolt narrative 2 Sam 15:17–17:29; 19:16a,18b–40. In a primary phase, through a long process of writing, editing, and rewriting, this part of the material originated in Judah, corresponding to the majority of the material in 2 Sam 2:1–5:3. Two major trains of thought buttress the concentration on Mahanaim. First, its combination with Hebron, similar only in 2 Sam 2:1–5:3, is analogous to its integration into the Absalom material in 2 Sam 15–19 that links Absalom’s move to Hebron with the battle in the forest of Ephraim. Second, arguing that David’s journey to Mahanaim is more artfully and intentionally integrated into the narrative and stretched out, Leonard-Fleckman proposes that it draws on material from 2 Sam 2–4, thus pointing to Mahanaim as Saul’s base that the story transforms into a place of refuge for David (137). The characteristic role of the house of David in 2 Sam 15:16a would thus not refer to a royal court, unlike in 2 Sam 2:1–5:3, but would be analogous to the role of David’s men and servants in that passage, representing an independent body of support (142).

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

Chapter 4 meticulously demonstrates how a subsequent secondary phase shifts in its depiction of the political landscape, pointing to a discourse between Judah and Israel in 2 Sam 19:9bβ–15, 16–18a; 19:41–20:13. These passages, Leonard-Fleckman proposes, redirect the attention to the Judean affiliation with David, thus providing a (secondary) Judean frame of reference that integrates the battle of Ephraim scenes and transitions into the Sheba rebellion (138). She also includes an oscillating perception of Sheba’s relation to Israel, both as Benjaminite (20:1), then as Ephraimite (20:21). This bookend serves as a bridge to the rebellion of Sheba and parallels this originally local story with Jeroboam’s rebellion in 1 Kgs 12. Thematically, these references to Judah ponder Israel’s impressive power from a Judean perspective and the theme of David’s eventual loss of Israel (140). Against tendencies of recent scholarship to ascribe 2 Sam 15–17, 19 to the Persian epoch, Leonard-Fleckman suggests that the Judah layer was introduced starting during the late preexilic time and that similar tendencies continued from then on (144).

Chapter 5 (146–87) analyzes passages from 2 Sam 2–5, following largely a suggestion to separate a pre-Deuteronomistic pro-Davidic account written in the wake of Israel’s fall in 720 BCE (in 2:4b–7, 8–10, 12,15b, 17, 25–29, 32b) that in various ways demonstrates for ideological purposes how Judah would succeed Israel. According to such a reading, the move of a rump state under Ish-Bosheth in 2:8–9 to Mahanaim appears to present a fictive event and fictive character that in the larger sequence of the narrative functions as a link of Saul’s death 2 Sam 1 with 3:1–4:12 and highlights Ish-Bosheth’s original legitimate, yet ultimately ill-fated control, in a storyline leading to David’s legitimate inheritance of the power over Jabesh-Gilead. The study follows this reconstruction to some extent, assuming, however, that 2 Sam 2–5 were written in light of David’s association with the rule over Israel alone, while it interprets scenes such as the anointing over Judah in 2 Sam 2:4a as a “Judah-centric addition” (186). The terminology of “this house” in 2 Sam 3:1 and 15:16a supports an understanding of the house of David as a group of kinship-based supporters that appears not to be specifically bound to a place (186). The main players in the narrative tradition were essentially competing in their claims of rulership over Israel. Leonard-Fleckman identifies the polities of Israel and Judah not as the primary reference and instead points to the house of David as a group of people rallying around a leader (187).

The exegesis of the Shechem assembly 1 Kgs 12:1–20 (ch. 6, 189–211) draws out preceding interpretations, highlighting again an originally independent, pre-Deuteronomistic source for the account of the house of David’s loss of power over Israel under Rehoboam. The original cast of characters were Rehoboam, Israel as a collective, the Jerusalem-based house of David 12:16 and a secondarily introduced Jeroboam (12:2–3a, 12). The assembly’s rejection of Rehoboam presupposes a prior rule of the house of David over Israel. The

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

idiom’s use is analogous to the use of the “house of X” polities in Assyrian royal annals (210–11).

The concluding chapter 7 (213–54) interprets the evidence of the Tel Dan inscription with its parallel between Israel and byt dwd in line 9 in support of an understanding of the biblical terminology of the “house of X” as an entity named after a ruler figure. The narrative geography in the stories prior to an eighth- or seventh-century landscape, reflected in a primary phase of the literary tradition, shows a different image of Judah that at this point in time “claims its heritage as part of Israel through the story of its leader, David, and potentially stakes a claim on the rival kingdom of Israel” (244). Only the later, secondary phase of the biblical tradition in 2 Sam 2:4a, 19:9bb–15, 16b–18a; 19:41–20:13 creates what Leonard-Fleckman refers to as “Judah bookends” (245) that shift the historiographic priority from Israel to Judah. Rejecting a clear geographical division between the two entities Israel and Judah in the perception of the primary phase, she finds David and, in particular, “the house of David” as traditionally tied into Israel. The rather modest settlement evidence for a tenth- and ninth-century BCE Jerusalem supports this result (252). The political claim to power that was associated with the idiomatic “house of David” in 2 Sam 3:1; 15:16a rose at a moment in time when in the storyline a political rule over Israel was either not a reality (2 Sam 3:1), threatened (2 Sam 15:16a), or forfeited (1 Kgs 12:16). This result supports the use of the name house of David as detached from the place of Jerusalem in a hypothetical earlier literary layer at a point in time when the base of the house of Judah was detached from a specific location. The mobility of a kinship-like group “house of David” as apparent in the references above would allow for a tenth-century BCE rule in “a small pocket running from Jerusalem south to Beersheba” (254).

The highly methodologically reflected study draws on numerous comparative readings of the terminology in a variety of sources, including a nuanced analysis of the external perceptions of “house of X” in Assyrian royal inscriptions and in primary sources of Syrian entities that it considers in detail (Tell Fekheriyeh, Sefire) in chapters 2 and 3 (41– 105). The reading of the sources in 2 Samuel and 1 Kgs 12 is concise, and the study presents its scholarship with clarity, discussing reasonable suggestions for the purpose of this project. At a time when scholars are eager to date particularly the larger contexts of the history of David’s rise and the Succession Narrative as relatively late traditions, this study offers a laudable and refreshing perspective. With its aim of reconstructing reference points for pre-720 BCE historical sources, the study adds needed nuance in the evaluation of older strata that it identifies as fragments. The study’s skepticism against large-scale tenth/ninth-century BCE documents, on the one side, andLeonard-Fleckman’s nuanced attempt to reconstruct a typical kinship-based terminology that may be part of a

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.

pre-Omride collective memory, on the other side, make this a fruitful contribution to current proposals.

Whether future scholarship will trust in the evaluation of the sources in 2 Samuel for the reconstruction of a pre-Omride tradition about a house of David primarily connected with Israel remains to be seen. Suffice it to briefly ponder how this source-critical question might relate to discussions about the sources of Kings. The alleged sources of the book of Kings potentially may support an early association of a Davidic rule with Israel. The synchronistic chronicle assumingly at the heart of the book of Kings (A. Jepsen, Die Quellen des Königsbuches [Halle: Niemeyer, 1953]), starts with a Davidic rulership over Israel and Hebron in 1 Kgs 2:10–12. The passage functions as hinge to connect the “house of David” passages in 2 Samuel. This oldest source of a continuously updated document in Kings (Jepsen, 38), in a remarkable opening of the synchronistic chronicle of the two kingdoms, connects David with Israel beside his rule over Hebron. Seen through the lens of this chronicle that follows the story of Israel and Judah at a later time, David’s connection with Israel would indeed be remembered as an old feature of the shared record of these royal annals. Still, the function of this statement of a Davidic rule over Israel remains to be discussed. David’s rule over Israel at the beginning of the synchronistic account could also be interpreted as in line with, and therefore resulting from, an anti-Israel bias in the sources of the book of Kings. If the overwhelming bias of the synchronistic chronicle had already shaped a tendency to point to discontinuities in Israel’s leadership and to the continuity of the Davidic dynasty in Judah, 1 Kgs 2:10–12 may well be a product of this bias. Furthermore, in hindsight, this tendency in favor of the Davidic monarchy could ultimately have materialized in claiming the memory of quenched and overcome Israelite revolts in the heart of Israel’s territory (2 Sam 16:1–15) and in its north (2 Sam 20). This notwithstanding, in its remarkably clear argument, the book under review makes a good point to assume an old tradition of a rule of David’s house over Israel, providing a well-informed, stimulating reasoning for an interpretation of the house of David as only secondarily connected with the polity of Judah.

This review was published by RBL ã2020 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.